Providing a valuable overview of regionalism throughout the entire continent, Regionalism in Modern Europe combines both geographical and thematic approaches to examine the origins and development of regional movements and identities in Europe from 1890 to the present. A wide range of internationally renowned scholars from the USA, the UK and mainland Europe are brought together here in one volume to examine the historical roots of the current regional movements, and to explain why some of them - Scotland, Catalonia and Flanders, among others – evolve into nationalist movements and even strive for independence, while others – Brittany, Bavaria – do not. They look at how regional identities - through regional folklore, language, crafts, dishes, beverages and tourist attractions - were constructed during the 20th century and explore the relationship between national and subnational identities, as well as regional and local identities. The book also includes 7 images, 7 maps and useful end-of-chapter further reading lists. This is a crucial text for anyone keen to know more about the history of the topical – and at times controversial – subject of regionalism in modern Europe.

In reaction to the centralizing nation-building efforts of states in nineteenth-century Europe, many regions began to define their own identity. In thirteen stimulating essays, specialists analyze why regional identities became widely celebrated towards the end of that century and why some considered themselves part of the new national self-image.

The complex and shifting relation between regionalism and modernity With its search for purity, honesty, modesty, and ‘fitness of purpose', the late 19th and early 20th century concept of architectural regionalism is seminal to the modern movement. In later historiography, however, regionalism in Europe was neglected and even labeled ‘backward'. The origins of this drastic change of perception can be traced to the 1930s, when regionalism as a positive form gradually turned into a ‘closed' form of regionalism, a folding back on one's own region as a defence mechanism in an economically and politically turbulent decade.

Cover -- Half Title -- Series -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Figures -- Maps -- Contributors -- Chapter 1 Introduction: Region, Nation and History -- Chapter 2 Language and Regionalism -- Chapter 3 Regionalism and Folklore -- Chapter 4 Nature: From Protecting Regional Landscapes to Regionalist Self-assertion in the Age of the Global Environment -- Chapter 5 Regional foods -- Chapter 6 Tourism and the Construction of Regional Identities -- Chapter 7 Fascism and Regionalism -- Chapter 8 Communism and Regionalism -- Chapter 9 Democracy and Regionalism In Western europe -- Chapter 10 Regionalism and its Diverse Framings in German-speaking Europe Across he Long Twentieth Century -- Chapter 11 Scandinavia: Regionalism in the Shadow of Strong states -- Chapter 12 Regionalism in the Low Countries -- Chapter 13 Regionalism in South-western Europe: France, Spain, Italy and Portugal -- Chapter 14 Borderlands, Provinces, Regionalisms and Culture In East-central europe -- Chapter 15 Regionalism in Russia -- Chapter 16 Baltic and Polish Regionalism(s): Concepts, Dimensions and Trajectories -- Chapter 17 Regionalism In South-eastern.europe -- Chapter 18 The Emergence of Conjoined Nationalisms and Regionalisms in the British isles -- Chapter 19 Conclusion: Overcoming Methodological Regionalism -- Index.

Stemming from an international and multidisciplinary network of leading specialists, this best-selling text is fully updated with new chapter additions. The new edition highlights external relations in the framework of the development of regional arrangements within the globalized world of the 21st century.

This volume describes real and mental regions as the historical undertone that destined a changing Europe during the last millennium. Over the centuries, historiography - in many different forms - became an important vehicle by which to create, articulate, and express the existence, awareness, and characteristics of Europe's regions. Be it the histories of noble families that were important stakeholders in a region, urban histories describing the developing urban networks through which regions could function, dynastic histories emphasizing the relationship between ruler and region, or hagiographies describing holy men and women and their veneration as focal points within regions - all of them represented and reflected identities within an understood spatial and or mental sphere. Historiography can therefore help us to understand the way in which regions were seen from within and from without, and to understand the patterns and dynamics of regional cohesion. Moreover, it sheds light on the dialectic between nation and region, and on the relationship between the regional sphere and the wider (inter)national sphere. The authors of this volume look at individual European regions from different points of view, using historiography as a lens. They analyse the ways in which history as a construct has played a role in establishing regional identity, providing examples of the ways in which recording, interpreting, and recounting the history of regions through the ages has been instrumental in shaping these regions. The first section of the volume explores regional identity in medieval and early modern historiography; the second shows how, in the age of the invention and triumph of the European nation-state (the long nineteenth century), historiography of a new kind was applied for a deliberate creation of regional identity, or at least reflected the need for a historical confirmation of identities.